I’m doing embedded development, running openSUSE 15.5 on a Mini-ITX motherboard using UEFI (AMI Aptio). Secure Boot is disabled. I’ve used an openSUSE USB drive to install to a SATA-connected SSD, and to an internal NVMe drive, and either drive boots the system without a hitch, but only if it’s the only attached drive.
However, for my work I need to be able to flexibly work with multiple boot drives, booting off of a selected drive and copying between it and another boot drive. Problem: if both the SSD and the NVMe drive are connected, then I can only boot from the SSD. It’s as if having the SSD plugged in hides the NVMe from UEFI:
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In the UEFI’s “Boot” screen, I’ve set the “FIXED BOOT ORDER” priorities to NVMe and then hard drive. Nope: always boots from the SSD. (Interesting thing: if only the NVME is connected then this menu shows the NVMe’s model number under the “NVMe” entry, but if I have both connected then I only see the SSD’s model number under the “Hard Disk” entry.)
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In the same screen, there’s a “UEFI Hard Disk Drive BBS Priorities” submenu. If the SSD is connected there is only an entry for the SSD, whether or not the NVMe is connected. If only the NVMe is connected, then there is an entry for the NVMe. And no matter what I choose, if the SSD is connected then it boots from the SSD.
It’s as if the BIOS can see the NVMe alone, or the SSD alone, but if both are connected then the SSD hides the NVMe from the BIOS. Once booted I can see both devices using “lsblk”, but I just can’t get it boot from the NVMe while the SSD is connected.
I could easily work around this for now, but I’ll need to have multiple drives to function in the future, and I’m concerned that this is a fundamental problem that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.
So: any idea why UEFI can only see a single openSUSE boot drive? Or, anything else I should try to gather more information?
Thanks,
Dan